Sure, it is appropriate to use language very precisely when speaking to creationist groups or addressing the issues when debating creationists.

As we all many of us agree, N.Wells's concern is valid. Take this accidental capture of one of my edits. I changed it before anyone had a chance to post a reply, but apparently, k.e had already downloaded the text for composition.

The issue I was discussing was the multiple meanings of "believe". You can see why I changed that sentence. Talk about circularity! It is a characteristic of language that the most common and useful words have multiple meanings that are discerned through context (a fact supported by information theory, e.g. f**k). Consequently, some ambiguity is expected (and a fount of comedy!).

Whitesides was addressing a scientific conference of the American Chemical Society. He may not even be much aware of Uncommon Descent. I doubt he would have thought his statements would be misunderstood by any reasonable audience, or even noticed much outside the community of his peers.

Whitesides made an appeal to expert authority among that very group of expert authorities. We can easily determine his unambiguous meaning. But look what they make of it on Uncommon Descent.

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Isn’t this the sort of thing Richard Dawkins is talking about when he defines “faith” as “belief without evidence”? I mean, why do “most chemists believe…that life emerged spontaneously” if there is no evidence as to how that can happen?

A totally useless statement as science but very enlightening as to the true nature of materialist blind faith “science”. It may be patently absurd but that doesn’t even matter to them!

You believe by faith that there was no Intelligent Designer involved. That sounds like religion to me. Evidence, we want evidence not just blind faith.

This is a “statement of faith”, a religious statement.

Of course, we should be careful in our use of language, but I'm not sure there is a solution to the problem of communicating with those whose minds are closed.

The reason I replied to an issue that obviously has N.Wells in a dander (and contrary to my usual practice of avoiding argument with someone who happens to be right) is that my own accidentally revealed edit seemed à propos.

(Davis says) ... [ID] tries to displace [scientific materialism] by setting up a new science, which is really just a disguised form of religion.

In response, Dembski says:

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[...] but has ID identified fundamental conceptual flaws and evidential lacunae in the conventional materialistic understanding of biological origins and is its appeal to intelligence conceptually sound and empirically supported?

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that ID has not identified "fundamental conceptual flaws" (IC and CSI? Please), and "evidential lacunae" (did someone buy a thesaurus recently?) - note that Dembski never bothers to critique the point that as Davis has pointed out - even if ID were "conceptually sound and empirically supported", ID is not science (note: last thursdayism is "conceptually sound and empirically supported", but is not science).

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

OK, so Al Gore is the most arrogant, wasteful, hypocritical, just plain bad person ever to walk the earth. So stipulated. WTF does that have to do with the question of the degree to which global warming is man-made and what we can and/or should do about it? Nothing, of course. It's just like Dembski's idiotic maunderings about that horrible racist, Charles Darwin, as if smearing the character of someone 150 years dead somehow forever falsifies arguments that person made.

UD Tards, suck my tu quoque.

--------------"Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers------"You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"

The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.

How? I have no idea. Perhaps it was by the spontaneous emergence of "simple" autocatalytic cycles and then by their combination. On the basis of all the chemistry that I know, it seems to me astonishingly improbable. The idea of an RNA world is a good hint, but it is so far removed in its complexity from dilute solutions of mixtures of simple molecules in a hot, reducing ocean under a high pressure of CO2 that I don't know how to connect the two.

We need a really good new idea. That idea would, of course, start us down the path toward systems that evolve autonomously—a revolution indeed.

--------------"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."

"But the fact is, the rearrangement of atoms into human brains and computers and the Internet does not violate any recognized law of science except the second law, so how can we discuss evolution without mentioning the one scientific law that applies?"

Are they seriously using the 2nd LOT argument this blatantly? Last week they used the giraffe neck, and Egnor is writing posts that say "I believe that God created us and all that exists, and that he holds us all in existence".

"But the fact is, the rearrangement of atoms into human brains and computers and the Internet does not violate any recognized law of science except the second law, so how can we discuss evolution without mentioning the one scientific law that applies?"

The Philosopher said the Internets is not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. Ipse dixits. But I'm more interested in brains — human brains. Let's look more closely at the creation of a new human brain, a prime example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

It starts with dinner and candle lights, a sip of wine and conversation. Perhaps, you may consider the dinner and conversation to be an opportunity for the male to show off his social graces and his, er, wit. Or the candle light and wine to bring out the radiance of the female's complexion. And it is.

But more importantly, the dinner and wine serves a vital function. It's fuel, fuel to provide the energy required for the hoped-for mating, a jubilant exothermic reaction. Fuel to provide the energy and nutrients for the emerging human brain as it develops within the female. Cut off the fuel, the famale will not be receptive to the male's advances at creating a new human brain. Cut off the fuel for long, the female and the nascent human brain will cease to develop and eventually die.

While the Internets may not be a big truck, the human brain is a heat engine.

There is a thread at ISCID on Sewell's work that is still semi-active, wherein Sewell's ideas receive a thorough drubbing. Long ago he used to respond there, but not any more. Now he's holed up at UD where he's guaranteed to go unchallenged.

And his argument is still pure bunk. Saying that a given arrangement of atoms violates the 2nd Law does not make it so, but apparently it's good enough for UD.

--------------"I wasn't aware that classical physics had established a position on whether intelligent agents exercising free were constrained by 2LOT into increasing entropy." -DaveScot

But the fact is, the rearrangement of atoms into human brains and computers and the Internet does not violate any recognized law of science except the second law, so how can we discuss evolution without mentioning the one scientific law that applies?

By the way, in an open system, isn’t machinery required to use the available energy to do useful and creative work? If so, machinery can’t come first, because machinery would be required to make that machinery.

Good god this boy is stupid.

Gil, what are atoms and molecules? Well, dern it, if they ain't like little machines!

[Ferrari]: From the point of view of the probabilities, yes, but we cannot guarantee that one will live long enough to see it. For example, for the drunkard to take one hundred successive steps forward [it is an uncertain walk], there are those who wait two to the hundred, for there are billions of billions of steps, and for the molecules of air there has to be tillions upon trillions of times (in reality many more than that, but it sounds bad) the age of and duration possible for the universe. So we can rest easy.

So because a drunk guy stumbles around for billions of years we can rest easy? Rest easy about what? Oh, of course, the Bible is true, and Jesus will take us all to heaven (the right ones, I mean).

I applied the filter to your comment and found that it was the product of a random process, acting without purpose or direction, and exhibited none of the hallmarks of being produced by intelligence. It was clearly the product of one monkey sitting at one typewriter for about 5 minutes - ds

P.S. Homo

--------------It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

Good to see the new comment moderation policy has gotten rid of the trolls at OE:

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There's definitely more to faith-based professionalism than science is willing to admit. My dad once hired a plumber who came and ran a bunch of copper pipes into an addition containing a new rumpus room and kitchen extension. Then, without ever testing to see if the pipes leaked, he had the drywall contractor seal it all up in the wall. My dad asked him why he didn't at least test them first and the plumber replied that he had prayed before he handed his work off to the drywaller, and that he was righteous man and that this had always worked in the past. Sure enough, when we finally turned on the water to the addition there were no leaks at all, as far as we could tell.

Sometimes prayer works better than experimentation. I wonder if the plumber had doubted his prayer and tested his pipes by pressurizing them BEFORE sealing them up in drywall if perhaps God would have taken this as a doubting of faith and made the pipes develop a slow leak AFTER they'd passed such a test. I don't know; the plumber obviously knew what he was doing.

--------------"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin

I am regularly in the Mrs, however I was sadly not in Chicago this time around. I went a couple of years ago and I am trying my damnedest to go next year. The ACS conference is the capo di tutti capi of extravagant conferences at which beers may be had. Although I did go to one in Brazil a few years back......

3:58 pmRuss: The non-religious may give less financially, but I’m not so sure about time. They seem quite committed to their political causes, and readily devote their time to them. And why give money if it can be taken by political force from the religious?

Okay, childrens, everyone get your EFs out. Arden, put that down! Okay, first put last years US charitable contributions in slot A. Good. Now, put the contributions of just 3 atheists, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and George Soros in slot B. No, Kieths, B, not D. Okay. Who can tell me what percentage of the population are atheists? Good - put that in slot C. If you've all done this correctly you should see the answer - "Jebus" - in slot D.

I see something.....wait.....oh yeah.....it's.....It's.......IT'S.....

WE INTERRUPT THIS POST TO BRING YOU A TARDFLASH:

STOP LOOKING AT MY MIGHTY EF HOMOS, I'M AN AGNOSTIC, NO REALLY, AND I KNOW MIKE DELL PERSONALLY. AND I'M AN AUTODICK WITH AN IQ SOMEWHERE WEST OF I-95. JEBUS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT....UNLESS "BIG WILLY" AND THE DISHY DENISE SAY SO. AFTER ALL I SHOULD KNOW, WOMEN BEG FOR MY SEED ETC. HOMOS.

A mathematics graduate student in Colombia has noticed the similarity between my second law arguments (”the underlying principle behind the second law is that natural forces do not do macroscopically describable things which are extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view”), and Bill Dembski’s argument (in his classic work “The Design Inference”) that only intelligence can account for things that are “specified” (=macroscopically describable) and “complex” (=extremely improbable). Daniel Andres’ article can be found (in Spanish) here . If you read the footnote in my article A Second Look at the Second Law you will notice that some of the counter-arguments addressed are very similar to those used against Dembski’s “specified complexity.”

Every time I write on the topic of the second law of thermodynamics, the comments I see are so discouraging that I fully understand Phil Johnson’s frustration, when he wrote me “I long ago gave up the hope of ever getting scientists to talk rationally about the 2nd law instead of their giving the cliched emotional and knee-jerk responses. I skip the words ‘2nd law’ and go straight to ‘information’”. People have found so many ways to corrupt the meaning of this law, to divert attention from the fundamental question of probability–primarily through the arguments that “anything can happen in an open system” (easily demolished, in my article) and “the second law only applies to energy” (though it is applied much more generally in most physics textbooks). But the fact is, the rearrangement of atoms into human brains and computers and the Internet does not violate any recognized law of science except the second law, so how can we discuss evolution without mentioning the one scientific law that applies?

Lawyer Philip Johnson complains that scientists won't talk rationally about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Lawyer Philip Johnson complains that scientists won't talk rationally about the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

I know exactly how he feels. Whenever I'm talking to a lawyer, I always bring up my theory that the 2nd Law is unconstitutional, and I always get a knee-jerk response. They just won't discuss it rationally.

--------------"I wasn't aware that classical physics had established a position on whether intelligent agents exercising free were constrained by 2LOT into increasing entropy." -DaveScot

At the core of Darwinism is essentially the notion that you really can get something for nothing — free information, free complex machinery, free design. – from chaos and natural law. The second law suggests that you can’t, so, obviously, the second law must not apply in the case of biological evolution, and anything can happen in an open system.The logic is simple: We know Darwinian processes can do all this marvelous stuff because life exists, and there is no other materialistic explanation we can think of. Therefore, by definition, the second law must not apply to the origin of living systems and their subsequent diversification and increase in complexity and information content.By the way, in an open system, isn’t machinery required to use the available energy to do useful and creative work? If so, machinery can’t come first, because machinery would be required to make that machinery.This is why I contend that some scientists have gone mad when it comes to Darwinism. They’ve completely lost the ability to think objectively, and recast the laws of nature at will to conform with Darwinian philosophy.